DIRECTING FOCUS AND ENABLING INQUIRY WITH REPRESENTATIONS OF PRACTICE: WRITTEN CASES, STORYBOARDS, AND TEACHER EDUCATION

Abstract

We discuss affordances and liabilities of using a storyboard to depict a written case of a teacher’s dilemma that involves race, opportunity to learn, and student community. We rely on reflections by the teacher educator who authored the written case and later depicted it as a storyboard to use it with his preservice teachers (PSTs). The analysis involved, first, organizing the signifiers in each of the two representations of practice into what we call concentric spheres of stratification, and secondly, contrasting the various meanings attributed to signifiers by both the author and his PSTs. We suggest that the resources of storyboard allow for more inquiry and alternative narratives than is available from the single modality of text in the written case.